WEBVTT - METI: Existential Threat? Probably Yes 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.640 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.720 Chuck and we're just doing what we can together, moddeling 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:19.599 through the both of us, and this is stuff you 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:20.040 should know. 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:24.919 Wow, Ed Waite has set up. 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:27.360 I wanted to make sure the bar was really low. 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:32.320 Well, hold on a second before we get going. We 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:34.360 don't often plug shows, but there's a new one on 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.320 our network called Inner Cosmos. Oh, yes, that we wanted 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:39.720 to plug. That sounds super awesome. You know, have you 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.800 ever heard of David Eagleman. He's a neuroscientist. Seems like 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:46.040 he might have come up before, but he's from Stanford. 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.519 He's a best selling author and he's you know, he 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.320 explores these insightful questions about modern brain science, how it 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:55.840 intersects our lives. It's just kind of write up stuff 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.440 you should know. Is ali definitely and I think the 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:00.800 listeners would really checking it out. 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:01.680 So go check it out. 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:04.080 What's it called again, It's called Inner Cosmos. It's awesome, 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.160 very nice. I'm excited about this one. I think this 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:14.000 may button up our sort of talking to aliens suite. 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:17.480 I think you're absolutely right, because we've done one on 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:23.039 SETI yes, which is called the Search for Estra Terrestrial 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:27.600 Jerk Intelligence. 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:28.320 Yeah. 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:32.119 Yeah, and that's go listen to that episode. It's great. 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:34.480 That's listening out for stuff out in the Great Beyond. 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:36.240 We did the Golden Records? 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:38.080 Did the Golden Records? What were those? 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:44.559 Those were Carl Sagan's Love Child where he basically put 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:50.480 snippets of world music, pictures of people from around the world. 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.919 I think there was like greetings on there. And also 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.840 then there were plaques. There was engravings of like human anatomy, 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:03.840 which is and I think our location in the universe too. 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.120 Okay, here's where we are and this is a. 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:09.960 Penis you think exactly. Check it out. 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.480 So now we're moving on to probably the culmination, which 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.280 is something called medi. 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:20.920 Oh wait, we did one more too, Yeah, No, we did. Okay, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:22.120 you didn't want to talk about that? 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:23.600 Well, what was it? I can't remember. 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.560 Uh. I'll tell you, Chuck that there's a great name 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:30.760 for it, and uh I will share that with you directly. 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:32.959 But I just want to talk about what a great 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:36.880 name it was. I named it myself, yeah, and uh 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:38.799 it was just an all around good name. 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:43.160 It was kind of along these lines a little bit, right, man. 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.720 Oh, I got it how alien contact might work. Isn't 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:47.440 that a great name? 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:49.120 That's great? 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:53.320 So that was okay, that came before and then now 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:55.440 this one, and you're right, it's all buttoned up. We'll 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:56.720 never talk about it again. 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.400 Right, But like I said, now we're going to talk 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:03.560 about MEDI which also goes by active SETI, and that's 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:09.480 messaging to extra you know, ets intelligence. I'm not going 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:11.240 to try and say that word ever again on the show. 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:14.720 Oh always goop it up and you always snicker it's cute. 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:18.000 But let's get into it. 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.839 So, Chuck, you said that active SETI METI. They're one 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.160 and the same. But the whole purpose of them is 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:28.920 to not just sit around and listen passively for you know, 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.280 alien transmissions. That's what we've been doing forever. This is 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:37.920 something entirely different. It's proactive where we are now figuring 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:41.360 out how to shout out into the universe and send 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.920 those transmissions that we're hoping to find from alien civilizations 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.760 ourselves out there for other alien civilizations to find. 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:52.840 Yeah, and it turns out it's a pretty controversial thing. 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.480 I mean, when you first hear this idea, you're like, 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.240 if you're like me, you're like, oh cool, Like, great idea, 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:01.040 let's start sending messages out. But a lot of people 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:04.160 are saying, oh no, no, let's slow our role here, right, 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.000 and we'll get into all the pros and cons toward 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.640 the end. But there is an idea that capital g 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:14.640 capital s. The Great Silence is proof to some people 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.400 that hey, there is no one out here. We would 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.400 have heard something by now, the time that it would 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:24.800 take to colonize the Milky Way, you know, like it 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:27.480 would have happened by this point, and we would there 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:29.960 should be alien life everywhere if it was going to happen. 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:32.440 Yeah. I saw someone say that it should be as 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.240 obvious to us as the full moon is, Like. 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:37.479 The universe should be pretty obvious theeming. 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:39.480 With alien life, and yet it's not. That's the basis 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:42.640 of the Fermi paradox. And so it's also been called 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.200 the Great Silence. It's just weird, it doesn't make sense, 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:47.480 and so a lot of people say, well, that just 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:50.320 means we're alone in the universe. Other people there's a 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:55.240 SETI researcher, a legendary SETI researcher named Jill Tarter. She 0:04:55.360 --> 0:05:00.800 said that that concluding that life, that the universe is 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.560 lifeless based on the small amount of searching we've done 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:06.320 is akin to dipping a glass of water in the 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:09.520 ocean and declaring the ocean lifeless after that. 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.000 Search, which is kind of the opposite. Like some people 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:14.760 are saying it would have happened by now, and she's saying, 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:18.960 how do you know we've been listening for you know 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:22.760 how long, like sixty something years? Yeah, And she's like, 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:27.800 that's nothing. So the idea of METI comes along, and 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.520 some people say that, you know, we may as well, 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:35.880 because we've been inadvertently bouncing, you know, since the advent 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:39.719 of satellites for communication and television and stuff like that. Right, 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:44.000 we've been sending signals out there inadvertently for years anyway, 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:46.680 So why not just put a little purpose behind it? 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:50.720 Or as our boss and founder of stuff you should know, 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.280 Connell Byrne would say, make it intentional. 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:55.080 Nice. 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:56.960 He'll always says that I love. 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.239 That his ears are burning right now. 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.239 It's a good later run a business with intention sure, 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:04.600 as opposed to being reactive. 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.600 Right exactly, So he'd be a medi supporter. It sounds 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.760 like we should ask him sometime So there's a there's 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:13.080 a thing. It's that whole idea that you were talking 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:16.880 about that we've been basically broadcasting our presence inadvertently anyway. 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:19.760 It's called the barn door argument, like we already left 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:22.479 the barn door open. You can't put the cow back. 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.000 In something like that cow has already seen the city exactly, Yeah, 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:29.360 can't take it back to the farm exactly, mixing metaphors. 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:32.599 No, but I think it works very well, and we'll 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:36.160 get into that a little more. But the answer from 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:38.760 a lot of people to that is is that's actually 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:41.599 not true. You can kind of disassemble it, and we'll 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.120 do that later. But the idea is that if we're 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:50.160 if we switch over to purposeful transmissions, directed transmissions, what 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:51.200 what con will say? 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.039 Intentional intentional transmissions. 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.520 That's a whole new ball of wax. And because we 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.520 don't know what's out there, we can't say that what's 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.320 out there wouldn't come harm us if we caught its attention. 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:09.200 So because we don't know enough to say either way yet, 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:10.520 we should not do that. 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.520 Yeah, or at the very least, and again this is 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.960 a preamble to what we're going to dig into more later. 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:20.640 But at the very least, let's like slow our role 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:24.520 here and take our time and not let doritos do it. 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:28.840 Right, Yeah, that'll make happen at more sense in a minute. 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:34.360 But Yeah, there's something in risk management called the cautionary principle, 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.920 and it's basically saying, like, if if an activity or 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:41.800 an action could cause tremendous harm and you don't know 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.840 enough about it to say that it won't, either do 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.520 more research and figure out ways to make it safer, 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:51.840 or don't do it at all. And that's the argument principle. Yeah, 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:53.520 that's a lot. That's what a lot of people use 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:55.920 to argue against many we don't know enough right now. 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.800 We're not saying don't do it. It's a cool, worthy pursuit, 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:01.280 just don't do it the way that you guys are 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:05.640 suggesting right now, which is completely off the cuff and 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.760 basically a group of rogue people are trying to do 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:11.680 it solo for the whole world. 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.040 Well, I think that's a nice segue, speaking of good 0:08:16.080 --> 0:08:19.400 and bad ideas, to go back in time to the 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:21.920 fact to the idea that this isn't a new idea. 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.320 We've been thinking about this as humans for a long 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:29.120 long time, dating back to the early nineteenth century, there 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:32.440 was a German mathematician named and these weren't crackpots. These 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.679 were pretty respected people in their fields. Carl Friedrich Gauss. 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:40.000 He said, here's what we should do. Why don't we 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.480 cut down a bunch of the Siberian forest. Why don't 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:45.760 we plant wheat fields kind of like crop circles, but 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:50.640 in the shape of big right triangles. To just let people, 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.840 your people, let these ets see it. If they can 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.000 see it, at least they'll know that we understand the 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:01.079 Pythagorean theorem. Then about so, let's we'll get a bunch 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.600 of free wheat out of it. Wheat not weed. 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:05.559 I said, wheat. 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:07.240 Oh okay, they said weed. 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:10.800 I can't see Carl Friedrich Gouss calling it weed. 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:13.040 That'd be funny, though, if they just planted a huge 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:15.320 marijuana fields. They're like, you might as well kill two 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:15.800 birds here. 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:17.960 That initiative might have happened back then. 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.480 So then a few decades later in Austrian astronomery, name 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:27.680 named Joseph von Littrew said, how about this, you like 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.000 wacky ideas, why don't we dig big twenty mile wide 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:34.640 trenches that are in different geometric shapes and fill them 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:36.360 with kerosene and set them on fire. 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.199 It's a little you don't have anything but smoke inhalation 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:42.760 to show for it after that's done. At least with 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:45.800 Gouss's idea, you had wheat or weed, depending on what 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:46.240 you grew. 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:49.400 But these were sort of the early ideas of how 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:52.680 we could potentially send a message, you know, obviously before 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:54.480 the advent of radio telescopes. 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.680 Yes, and they were dumb, dumb ideas, but it does 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.680 show that we were thinking about this. We we want 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:05.640 to contact other civilizations that may be out there. Sure 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:10.280 there were I'm sure other proposals that didn't quite make 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:12.960 the historical cut. But if we kind of flash forward 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:17.800 to November of nineteen sixty two, we come to probably 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.800 what you could call the first medi broadcast. It was 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:26.560 Soviet astronomers at a radar station in the Crimea. I 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:31.360 think it's one that's still there today called evepteriea a 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:35.480 seventy millimeters or seventy meter telescope. Seventy millimeters wouldn't be 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.200 very powerful, baby scope, but back in nineteen sixty two 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:42.839 they broadcast in morse code a three word message to 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.440 a star that was about two thousand light years away, 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:50.199 and the message said world. You could also interpret the 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:53.839 word is peace. Lenin they're being very sick of fan 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.520 it USSR. They're being jingoistic. 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.280 About ten years later, Americans and Soviets got together, or 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.920 at least the scientists did, and they said, all right, 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:08.640 let's at least get together and start to brainstorm how 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:12.200 we might go about this. And they invited Frank Drake 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:16.440 of the famous Drake equation and Carl Sagan famous for 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:20.400 being Carl Sagan. Sure Neil deGrasse Tyson wanted to go, 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.040 but they said, you're only thirteen years old or so, 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.880 just once you just concentrate on, you know, getting a date. 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.240 Maybe just keep at it, buddy, just stay that kid. 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:36.120 He's like, but I want to go. And then James 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:38.319 Elliott was an astronomer that was there and he had 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.360 the idea and sort of another two birds one stone. 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:42.680 He said, we can get rid of all of our 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:45.240 nuclear warheads in the world if we just take him 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.439 to the far side of the moon and then blow 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:51.000 them up and that'll be detectable from one hundred and 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:54.160 ninety light years away. And everyone was like, yeah, not 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:54.839 a great idea. 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:56.800 Yeah, you can kill two birds with one stone, but 0:11:56.840 --> 0:11:59.480 you also lose the moon in the bargain. So no, 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.240 it was a very good idea at all. But I 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:07.200 think at that no, that happened before I was going 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:09.560 to say, at that meeting, Frank Drake came up with 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.040 the Drake equation, which is basically a formula to figure 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.320 out the chances of other intelligent life out there in 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:20.760 the universe. I think that was more like nineteen sixty 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:23.160 or something like that. This is well into the seventies, 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.680 so Drake was already legendary, at least as legendary as Sagan, 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:30.040 and those two actually teamed up in nineteen seventy four 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.520 and they got together and I guess you could call 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:39.520 this probably the first at least Western or American medi transmission. 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:41.400 It is called the Aricibo Message. 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:44.960 Yeah, and that was a little more and you'll see, 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:47.880 as the case with a couple of these early attempts, 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.040 it was less like hey, I really think this is 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.600 going to reach somebody, and a little more like, hey, 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:56.560 look how powerful our toys are these days. And that 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:58.920 was the case here with a radio telescope, the Arasibo 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:03.600 telescope in Puerto Rico, and they just kind of wanted 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:05.599 to show it off, so they aimed at at the 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:09.640 M thirteen cluster, about three hundred thousand stars twenty five 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.360 thousand light years away this time, and considering the Soviet 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.400 when twelve years earlier it was two thousand light years away. 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:18.320 They had you know, this is really getting out there 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:19.280 at this point. 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:23.400 Right, And the message they beamed was usay you yes, hey. 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:27.080 Actually the message they beamed was pretty remarkable, especially for 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:27.679 its time. 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:32.319 So they said gerald forward, but who really. 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.560 They use binary code ones and zeros, right, and they 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.920 represented ones and zeros same thing as light and dark, 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.880 the presence of something, the absence of something, just two 0:13:44.920 --> 0:13:48.640 sides to one coin. They chose that pretty ingeniously because 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:54.360 you can make a really good case that math, algebra, trigonometry, geometry, 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:58.240 all these are human constructs to understand math, but they're 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.440 not necessarily a universal life language. You can make a 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.120 pretty good case that binary is a universal language, that 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.880 there's at base such a thing as something and not 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:13.000 something everywhere in the universe, and that's what they use 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.120 to transmit this message. And still today it's pretty much 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.560 agreed upon. If you're going to craft yourself a mety message. 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.720 You're probably gonna want to use binary because it's it's 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:24.240 probably the language of the universe. 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.640 Yeah, that's I mean, that's kind of a really interesting thing. 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:30.120 And I think we talked about that a lot in 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.520 that third episode that you had to search. 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.040 For how alien contact might work. 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:40.560 Yeah, like, can we even wrap our brains around the 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:45.520 fact that they may not even like understand what our 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:50.120 three dimensions are, much less what languages or whatever, you know. 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:52.640 And I mean we also kind of tangentially got into 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:56.120 that and the Nuclear Semiotics episode. Oh yea, it's even 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:59.240 talking to other humans ten thousand years in the future 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:03.400 is virtually impossible. We're talking about like entirely different types 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:07.320 of beings conceivably, So it's a lot to kind of 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:10.200 take into consideration when you're crafting one of those messages. 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.640 Yeah, for sure. So Sagan goes on, if we're kind 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.760 of going on a timeline here in seventy seven to 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:19.400 launch those Golden Records that we have a really good 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:22.520 episode on. You should check that out. But again, this 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:25.280 was another thing where it wasn't showing off, but it 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:28.040 was kind of a kind of a publicity thing because 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:31.520 the voyager one is really slow, only goes about thirty 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.280 eight thousand miles an hour, and Sagan was even like, 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.840 this is not going to get very far out there. 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.280 No, but it was I think what Sagan was doing 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:43.560 at the time, I don't remember. I'm sure we covered 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:45.400 it in the Golden Records episode and we did an 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:49.960 episode in Sagan too himself that he was probably just 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:54.040 trying to inspire humans to start thinking beyond Earth. 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:57.080 Sure, because there was just virtually. 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:01.160 No chance whatsoever that any civilist was going to encounter 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:06.560 this one tiny, slow moving space probe. It's possible that 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:08.400 they could have noticed it, and we're tracking it, but 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:10.680 the chances are very low. So I think he was 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:13.680 trying to keep get people talking about this kind of thing. 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:16.320 And that's still a bit of the spirit of medi today, 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.960 to get people talking about how to contact other people, 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:23.200 what we want to say, and in doing that we 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:25.760 kind of examine our own values, like we strip away 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:28.040 all the now that's not really as important as this, 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.440 like what's the basic things that make us humans that 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:35.680 we would want to express to some non human intelligences 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:37.840 about ourselves to get across who we are. 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:43.000 Yeah, totally. So maybe before we take a break will 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:46.000 zip through these last attempts because there are a handful 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:48.440 of other ones sort of leading up to where we 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:52.400 are today. There was another Russian. This is a radio engineer, 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:59.359 big medi guy named Alexander Zeitsef. He initiated for broadcasts 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.640 one ninety nine, two thousand and one, two thousand and three, 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:07.080 in two thousand and eight using a Ukrainian radio telescope. 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:10.639 And as with the others, you know, some photos, some music, 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:17.240 something called the interstellar Rosetta Stone, which is another attempt 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:20.200 like here's our math and physics and chemistry and biology 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:25.160 here on Earth, then maybe you can understand this. NASA 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:28.719 did another publicity stunt when when they beamed the Beatles 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:34.199 song across the universe toward Polaris in two thousand and eight. 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.439 They I can't remember if they were criticized for that 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:42.640 or not. Yeah. There was also you mentioned Dorito's. Dorito's 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:46.560 held a contest in the UK to come up with 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:51.680 a thirty second ad that got across humanity, and the 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:55.480 winning entry was a bunch of chips that escaped from 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.439 a bag and sacrificed one of their own to the 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:02.000 god of Salsa. Dorito's is like yeah, nailed it. That's 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:04.639 exactly all of humanity. We do that all the time. 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:08.479 And they transmitted that that thirty second commercial over and 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:12.720 over for six hours. Eh, boy at a star called 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.840 forty seven ursa majoris, which is forty nine light years 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:18.400 away or forty five light years away. 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:19.040 Yeah. 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:21.720 Can you imagine getting six hours of the same Dorito's 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:24.520 commercial over and over again and not being like, I'm 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:27.160 gonna invade that place. This is just too annoying. 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:34.840 And then should we even mentioned this last guy? Uh? Yeah, 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.720 all right, why not. There's an artist named Joe Davis 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:42.119 who has made a couple of interstellar transmissions. One was 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:48.560 called Poetica Vaginal and he recorded the vaginal contractions of 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:53.480 ballet dancers and broadcasts those into outer space in nineteen 0:18:53.520 --> 0:18:57.760 eighty five. And then I guess he I'm curious what 0:18:57.800 --> 0:18:59.680 he did between eighty five and two thousand and nine 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.320 if that's what he did in eighty five. But finally 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:05.280 in two thousand and nine he did it again, except 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:07.560 this time he was like, let me just send out 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:12.080 the genetic code for a plant enzyme that's essential for photosynthesis. 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:13.240 That makes a little more sense. 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:15.560 So that's basically where we are today, there's been a 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:20.919 handful of basically solo attempts of people who have friends 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:25.639 that work at Radar Telescope arras who beamed messages for 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:28.680 one reason or another, usually artistic or commercial. 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:33.520 Yeah, speaking of commercial, Yeah, God, look at that. I 0:19:33.600 --> 0:20:03.680 just stepped all over it too. We'll be right back, Okay, 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:06.920 So we are back. We are catching up to the future, 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.600 and we're going to start with a man named Douglas 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:16.040 vakoch vakok I think it's fake koch veakoch v a 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:20.040 koc h. He's a SETI guy, and he was there 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:22.959 for about sixteen years where he worked his way up 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:27.480 to the director of Interstellar Message Composition, which is you 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:30.000 know exactly you know where you want to be if 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:32.680 you want to send messages out. And he kept saying 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:34.760 like SETI, come on, let's do this, let's get on it, 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.800 let's send messages out. And they just folded their arms 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:40.440 and shook their head. Now and he said, fine, I'm 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:42.399 going to leave and I'm going to go start my 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:45.560 own little group called Mehdi. And that's where Mehdi was born. 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:49.560 Yeah, and SETI also refused to go the opposite way 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:54.560 and outright ban messaging extraterrestrials. And so there were some 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.080 like high level critics of Mehdi who departed SETI. So 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:00.159 SETI was just shedding people left and right for a 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:03.240 little while over this topic. And it actually goes to 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:09.240 show you like in scientific circles, especially astronomy circles, it's 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:12.040 a big deal. It's a really heated discussion, like people 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.920 will start screaming at each other over this. Oh really, yeah, 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:18.119 it's it's yeah, there's a lot of pettiness and backstabbing 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:23.720 and s talking. It's it's it's strange. 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:25.680 Science fight, science fight. 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:28.560 Yeah. And I'm not saying it's strange that it's controversial. 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:31.119 I'm saying the way that these scientists carry out the 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:34.159 debate and arguments is strange. 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.000 Right, It's it's uh, they don't they don't thumb wrestle 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:41.080 like any old dates, right, or what is it? Thumb war? 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.280 Yeah? One, two, three, four, Yeah, we. 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:47.320 Always called it thumb wrestling. Though this whole thumbre thing 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:49.480 is just that's what the kids are doing these days. 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:53.000 I think it's just you say thumb war with the rhyme, 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:55.080 but I think you still call it thumb wrestling. That 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.359 was my experience, and that's typically the correct one. 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:03.080 All right, very important work we're doing here, the thumb 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:08.960 wrestling thing. So Mehdi has one. They have actually tried 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:15.040 this one time in two thouy seventeen. They did a 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:18.520 one short series of transmissions. They also use the ones 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:21.639 and zeros technique because you said it was best, it 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:23.200 is and they said, Josh said it was best, so 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:27.359 let's go with that. And again in it included, you know, 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:30.560 some basic numbers. It included some basic math, a little 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:35.240 bit of trigonometry, like, hey, here's how electromagnetic waves work. 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:38.120 Here's a little bit of music that might suit your fancy. 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:40.960 And here's a clock. This is just going to count 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:42.520 how long it's been traveling. 0:22:42.640 --> 0:22:45.000 I could not, for the life of me, figure out 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:47.800 how they would have done that. I saw, yeah, I 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:49.960